The latest controversy associated with the Chinese government and the Beijing Olympics has been to do with the age of their gymnasts, and specifically gold medal-winning He Kexin (何可欣). Allegations have suggested that Miss He was born in 1994, meaning that she is too young to compete in the Olympics (16 years or older), while her registration for the Olympics states that she was born in 1992.

This argument has again been spun into a battle between the ‘anti-Chinese western media’ and the ‘government mouth-piece Chinese media’.

So where did the allogations come from?

The earliest record of the allegations Bob has found is in the NYT on 27th July. Here the NYT references previous reports within official Chinese press stating He’s age as 13 in 2007 and 14 in 2008. The article also refers to official documents found online.

This is where it gets interesting…

A blogger, and online security expert known as Stryde (or Mike Walker if you’re being formal) on hearing the allegations decided to conduct a little test to see what documents could be found using search engines.

Searching on Google for cached files using the fields (site:cn 何可欣 filetype:xls 1994) Stryde found that He’s name had been removed from the one resulting file. So he tried the same trick on Baidu:

“In the Baidu cache, which apparently has not been hit with the scrub brush (yet), two spreadsheets published by the Chinese government on sport.gov.cn both list He Kexin’s birthday as 01-01-1994, making her 14 years old. For as long as these links work, you can access the documents directly, either using the directions and screenshots above, or these links:cache1cache2″

Now, these documents are not conclusive proof that He Kexin was born is 1994 (as Stryde himself acknowledges). They may be mistakes, or perhaps it is even possible that someone has hacked in and amended these (though as this comes from a Chinese government site, these options do seem unlikely).

However this has been deemed enough evidence for the IOC to call for further investigation.

The official government’s response has been to blame the mistake on a paper-work error when He transferred from one city team to another last year. Although this does not really explain why the domestic media had believed her date of birth was in 1994.

This subject has been touched upon briefly on CCTV 9 (the English language station), which in itself is a positive thing. But there has been no debate, with the simple notion that as the authorities have now provided He’s passport.

This doesn’t really wash – the idea of a school child writing their own sick note after skipping school for a couple of days without their parent’s knowledge, springs to mind.

It’s a shame that this should come after such a successful Olympics, whether or not it is true. However, it won’t dampen the spirits in China. Most will be happy with the official response, and those that Bob has spoken to who don’t believe He is 16, don’t really care. “Oh no, she is not 16” said a colleague, “but do you know what? Chen Ruolin (陈若琳), a diver, is even younger!”

Updated

Bob has subsequently realised that actually whether or not Chen Ruolin is 16 or not is fairly irrelevant judging by the fact the British diving star Tom Daley is only 14. Obviously different rules apply in diving.